The Last Run by Todd Lewan Page A

retirement.
    It was better that way. The divorce had already gone through, in January, and he’d had to endure seeing Laurie and Koval together on the chow line in the mess. He tried to keep with his children. The custody settlement allowed him to see Brendan, who at that time was eight, and Katie, three, on weekends. Since the court allotted his ex-wife the family van, he would send a taxi over to his old house to pick up the kids. He could never bring himself to see them walk out of another man’s house.
    By then he was homeless. On weekends he rented a room at the Super 8 motel so the kids would have a place to sleep when they came to visit.
    Late that summer he heard that Koval and Laurie had been granted permission to live together with the kids in Coast Guard housing. Then there was talk that Koval was being transferred to Kodiak in the spring of 1998, and that they planned to marry before the move.
    That was just three months away, now. He wouldn’t miss those two. But the kids. They were going to take his kids. Brendan and Katie. Unless he made money soon, enough to get himself off the streets, the state of Alaska was going to wink and nod and let them get away with it.
    The boat did not rock as much as it had earlier and gradually Bob Doyle stopped thinking about his ex-wife. Thinking about her won’t do you any good, he said to himself. God, I hope we have a good trip and make money. It would be wonderful if I could stand up and do something right for a change. Maybe I will, he thought. And then he was asleep.
     

TWELVE
    W hen he woke Bob Doyle noticed two, big feet dangling off the edge of the top bunk. The toes were black and blistered, the heels scaly and scabby and puckered. They smelled like rotting cabbage. Bob Doyle tried not to breathe through his nose while he dressed. He pulled on a pair of sweats, a hooded jacket, a wool sweater, socks, rubber boots and a cap, and then stood for moment, contemplating the big, gnarled feet. He was going to have to do something about Mike DeCapua’s feet. Maybe boric acid and a wire brush would help. He stumbled into the galley.
    Pouring a cup of coffee, black, he heard voices on the dock. He pulled the Dutch door open, went out to the starboard railing and looked at the channel. It had rained and there was a mist. He loosened his sweats and pissed off the railing, watching his urine make a long, steaming arc, then shook himself and, wiping his right hand on his sweatpants, walked around to the foredeck. Mark Morley and Gig Mork were bringing aboard the last of the groceries. Morley tossed a duffel bag on the deck along with a small, vinyl suitcase. Mork had a bulging, plastic trash bag over one shoulder.
    “What’s in the bag?” Bob Doyle asked him.
    “Smokes.”
    “Hey, Bob,” Morley said, “give Giggy here a hand. Let’s get all of his shit in the fridge and cupboards quick. I don’t want to fart around here any longer. Where’s your buddy?”
    “Sleeping.”
    “Well, get his ass up. We got a trip to make.”
    “Right.”
    After he and Mork began packing up the refrigerator and freezer and stowing the tins, Mike DeCapua came out. He was in his boots and rain jacket and powder blue pajama bottoms with squiggly circle designs. From his cracked lower lip balanced a bent cigarette, as though it had been glued there.
    “Hey, Giggy,” he said, the cigarette jiggling like a doll on a coiled spring. “Give me a light.”
    Mork threw him a lighter.
    “Lot of food.”
    “Give us a hand, Mike.”
    “In a minute.”
    He went out on deck and smoked while they packed the groceries away. There was maybe two weeks’ worth of food, Bob Doyle thought, and it took them an hour to squeeze it all in. In a little while they heard the cough and grunt of an engine turning over, and then the throbbing through the deck planks, and everything had that sooty, diesel smell. Morley had grabbed DeCapua and together they were testing the motors, bilges, deck lights, winch, RSW